mike's web loghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/mike pope's Web logen-UShttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogFeed.rssmike@mikepope.comThu, 17 Aug 2017 21:13:00 GMTThursday, August 17, 2017 9:13:00 PM60MS Word: avoiding taboo words and other tricky vocab http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2552As most people discover, there's a class of writing error that spell check just can't help you with. Consider these examples:<ul><li>We recommend that the company shit its resources for better output.</li><li>The event is open to the pubic.</li></ul>Run these through spell check, and all is well. Only, of course, it's not.<br /><br />As I recently learned, Word has a feature that can help find errors like this: an <em>exclusion list</em>. An exclusion list has words that are spelled perfectly fine, but that should be excluded from your documents. <br /><br />The steps for creating an exclusion list are described in a <a target='_blank' href='https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/blog/how-to-catch-accidental-swearwords-using-words-exclusion-dictionaries-by-sam-hartburn'>great blog post</a> by Sam Hartburn. The basic idea is that you add words, one per line, to .lex files in a specific folder on your computer. Here's the Windows location--see notes later for Mac instructions:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:.25in"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/exclusionList.png" width="647" height="327" /></div><br />You can use any text editor to edit the file, including Notepad.<br /><br />Note that there are different .lex files for different languages, and in fact for different flavors of each language&mdash;e.g. English US and English GB. (It's not inconceivable that there's a way to set up a global .lex file, but I don't know. Leave a comment if you know about that.) <br /><br />Once you've got your exclusion list(s) updated, close and then reopen Word. Then when you run the spell checker, Word will flag words that are part of your exclusion list:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:.25in"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/spellCheckWithExclusion.png" width="468" height="219" /></div><br />The examples I've shown here pertain to, you know, taboo vocabulary. Another excellent use for this feature is to flag words that you often mistype but are technically spelled correctly, such as <em> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2552'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,editing,MS Wordhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2552http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2552Wed, 05 Jul 2017 15:02:05 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2552http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2552http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=25522Congratulations on your successhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2547On Facebook today, one of the editors I know, <a target='_blank' href='http://www.featherschneider.com/'>Amy J. Schneider</a>, posted about a habit that some writers have, namely adding a kind of reflexive "successfully" to their sentences. Here's an example, which I'm sure we've all seen variations of:<br /><div style="margin-left:.25in"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/chaseSuccessfullyLoggedOff.png" width="602" height="312" /></div><br />You haven't just logged off. You <em>successfully</em> logged off. (Thankfully, you didn't <em>unsuccessfully</em> log off.) <br /><br />I see this <em>all the time</em>, and it bugs me pretty much every time. Just for yucks, I did a search for "successfully" in the documentation set I’m currently working on. I found 1473 instances; here are just a few:<ul><li>Snapshot created successfully.</li><li>Successfully logged into database. </li><li>After you have successfully created the file, &hellip;</li><li>Click the <strong>Check</strong> button to verity that the service can successfully connect to your job. </li><li>To confirm that the volume was successfully taken offline, &hellip;</li><li>After the device is successfully updated, it restarts.</li><li>Make sure the test has successfully passed before you proceed.</li></ul>&hellip; and on and on and on. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/successmanonmountain.png" width="120" height="176" style="float:right;margin:10px;" />I ask you: is the word <em>successfully</em> really necessary in any of these instances? I posit that it is not. Moreover, and since I apparently am dispositionally incapable of not doing this, I ask myself "Wait, is there an unsuccessful way for this to happen?" <br /><br />I reckon I could do a global search-and-<strike>destroy</strike> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2547'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,editinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2547http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2547Thu, 15 Jun 2017 16:14:36 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2547http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2547http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=25470Bang!http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2546The linguist Geoff Nunberg has <a target='_blank' href='http://www.npr.org/2017/06/08/532148705/after-years-of-restraint-a-linguist-says-yes-to-the-exclamation-point'>an essay</a> on NPR today in which he tells of his rediscovery of the joys of using exclamation points. As he notes &hellip;<blockquote>Yet writers and editors only pride themselves on expunging the marks, never on sticking them in. When it comes to exclamation points, the only virtue we recognize is self-restraint</blockquote>This is true. In my work (software documentation), we maintain a tone that is, while not entirely academic, pretty neutral. Just the facts. And facts rarely require exclamation marks.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/exclamationPoint.png" width="160" height="160" style="float:right;margin:10px;">A story I've told many times: Years (decades) ago when I was learning the craft, I drafted something in which I'd included an exclamation point. My then-manager circled it and added this note: "Nix. Too exciting." I've added very few exclamation marks since then.<br /><br />Technical docs have been on a path toward more friendliness, it's true. And these days especially, docs might initially be created by people who do not spend their days in the tech-writing trenches. The result is that some of these drafts can have a distinctly marketing feel to them, which of course includes exclamation points. Which I always take out.<br /><br />And more than one exclamation point? Good lord. From the editor Andy Hollandbeck I <a target='_blank' href='https://www.copyediting.com/a-great-word-for-an-annoying-writing-habit/'>learned</a> the word <em>bangorrhea</em>, which is the use of excessive!!! exclamation points. The developer Rory Blyth once summed up this editorial attitude: "The use of more than one exclamation point side-by-side, in any context (except comics), is a sign of mental insanity, a marketing degree from the University of Phoenix Online, or both."<br /><br /> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2546'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>language,writing,editinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2546http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2546Tue, 13 Jun 2017 12:23:17 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2546http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2546http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=25460Paste unformatted text in Wordhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2536Another quick post about Word, primarily for my own benefit (when I forget this later).<br /><br />Word has several options for how you can paste text:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/wordPasteOptions.png" width='177' height='91' /></div><br />They are (in order):<ul><li><strong>Keep Source Formatting</strong>. This option keeps the original formatting (both character and paragraph formatting), but converts it to direct formatting.</li><br /><li><strong>Merge Formatting</strong>. This option copies basic character formatting (bold, italics, underline) as direct formatting, but does not copy any paragraph formatting.</li><br /><li><strong>Use Destination Styles</strong>. This option copies the text and applies styles that are in the target document. (This option appears only if there matching styles in the target doc.)</li><br /><li><strong>Keep Text Only</strong>. This option copies the text as plain text, with no formatting. </li></ul>I need the last one (paste plain text) more often than any of the others, so I want it on a keyboard shortcut. You can do this by recording a macro of yourself using the <strong>Keep Text Only</strong> option. But I realized there's an even easier way&mdash;just assign a keyboard shortcut to the built-in <code>PasteTextOnly</code> command. <br /><br />I keep forgetting that most anything Word can do has a command. If a gesture requires just one command, you can assign a keyboard shortcut directly to it. Maybe writing this out will help me remember.<br /><br /><span style="color:red;font-weight:bold;">Update</span> I added a video!<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/izK3K6sXjNI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>technology,writing,MS Wordhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2536http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2536Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:35:11 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2536http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2536http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=25360Word macros for displaying styles in the Styles panehttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2481This is another in a series of blog posts about how I configure Microsoft Word, which I add here primarily for my own reference. <br /><br />I often use the <strong>Style</strong> pane, and within that pane, I often want to change the styles that are displayed. Sometimes I want to see all the styles; sometimes just the styles that are defined in the current document; sometimes just the styles currently in use.<br /><br />You can change this display by using a dialog box. In the <strong>Styles</strong> pane, click the <strong>Options</strong> link, and then use the dropdown lists to select which styles to display and how they're ordered, like this:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/stylesPaneDisplayOptions.png" width='426' height='393' /></div><br />But that can get to be an annoying number of clicks if you're switching between these display options frequently. So, macros to the rescue. I recorded myself making one of these changes, then created a couple of variations to give me the different displays I want. Here are the macros I currently use, where the sub name is (I hope) self-explanatory:<pre>Sub SetStylesPaneToAllAlphabetical()<br /> ActiveDocument.FormattingShowFilter = wdShowFilterStylesAll<br /> ActiveDocument.StyleSortMethod = wdStyleSortByName<br />End Sub<br /><br />Sub SetStylesPaneToInCurrentDocument()<br /> ActiveDocument.FormattingShowFilter = wdShowFilterStylesAvailable<br /> ActiveDocument.StyleSortMethod = wdStyleSortByName<br />End Sub<br /><br />Sub SetStylesPaneToInUse()<br /> ActiveDocument.FormattingShowFilter = wdShowFilterStylesInUse<br /> ActiveDocument.StyleSortMethod = wdStyleSortByName<br />End Sub</pre>To complete the picture, I map the macros to these keyboard shortcuts:<br /><br /><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">ctrl+shift+p,a</span> — <code>SetStylesPaneToAllAlphabetical</code><br /><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">ctrl+shift+p,c</span> – <code>SetStylesPaneToInCurrentDocument</code><br /> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2481'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>technology,writing,MS Wordhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2481http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2481Mon, 14 Mar 2016 00:01:22 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2481http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2481http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24810AutoFormat in Wordhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2479I have used Microsoft Word for years&mdash;decades&mdash;but hardly a week goes by when I don't learn something new. (Including things that are probably pretty well known to others, oh well.) Anyway, TIL about how to use the batch version of auto-formatting in Word. Since I think a lot of people already know this, I'm adding the information here primarily for later reference for myself. <br /><br />Word has settings to perform "auto-formatting as you type." These include things like converting quotation marks into so-called smart quotes (i.e., typographical quotation marks), converting double hyphens (--) into em-dashes (&mdash;), converting typed fractions (1/2) into typographic fractions (&#189;), etc. You set these options in the <strong>AutoCorrect</strong> dialog box: <strong>File</strong> &gt; <strong>Options</strong> &gt; <strong>Proofing</strong>, <strong>AutoCorrect Options</strong> button, <strong>AutoFormat As You Type</strong> tab.<br /><br />It turns out that Word can also apply these auto-formatting instructions after the fact. In the same <strong>AutoCorrect</strong> dialog box, there's a tab named just <strong>AutoFormat</strong>:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/WordAutoFormat90.png" width='' height='' /></div><br />This has most of the same options as with auto-format-as-you-type. Here's the neat part: you can get Word to apply these formatting options by pressing <span style="font-variant:small-caps;">alt+ctrl+k</span>. There's no UI gesture, but you can use the feature for customizing the ribbon to add the relevant command to the ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar. <br /><br />A use case where I can see this working pretty well is if you paste text in from a text editor. (I do this all the time.)<br /><br />Credit where it's due: I learned about this from the article <a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/213117/how-to-automatically-format-an-existing-document-in-word-2013/" target="_blank"> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2479'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,technologyhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2479http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2479Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:23:08 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2479http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2479http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24790More on ambigious "should"http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2464I was reading a <a target='_blank' href='http://www.codeproject.com/Feature/WeirdAndWonderful.aspx?msg=5184915#xx5184915xx'>thread</a> on a computer forum, and someone asked this question:<blockquote>Quote:<br /><div style="margin-left:50px">Your password should contain at least 6 characters</div><br />If you're going to require it; don't say "should", say "must". </blockquote>This set off an interesting discussion on the semantics of <em>should</em> in this context. I've written about this <a target='_blank' href='http://mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2352'>before</a>, so I was interested to hear how people interpreted the example. <br /><br />Here is a sampling of the more serious posts on the thread:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px">From the requirements document: "The password entered by the user should be rejected if it does not contain at least six characters." If I received that requirement from my boss, I would make darn sure that the password is rejected. I don't think I would randomly reject some and not others.</div><br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px">The software is being polite; it's anticipating users who do not like being told what to do.</div><br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px">If it says "should" then it is not optional, like in "could". You should be "this tall" to ride this ride.</div><br />A number of people pulled out dictionary definitions (Wikitionary, heh). And one person cited <a target='_blank' href='https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119'>RFC 2119 ("Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels")</a>, which states:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px"><span style="font-family:monospace;">MUST This word, or the terms "REQUIRED" or "SHALL", mean that the definition is an absolute requirement of the specification.<br /><br /> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2464'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>editing,language,technology,writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2464http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2464Tue, 12 Jan 2016 09:04:43 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2464http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2464http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24640We'd better document thathttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2442From my daughter, another example of poor design patched by documentation. <br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/kenmore_instructions.jpg" width='412' height='510' /></div><br />Who imagined that a) having an unlabeled numeric scale was a good idea, and b) you move the knob to the right for "colder"?<br /><br />Let's at least fix the first problem, shall we? Like this:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/kenmore_instructions_fixed.png" width='409' height='510' /></div><br />We can't use documentation to fix the problem of having to dial "more cold." But at least we don't to print a frickin' manual right on the freezer.<br /><br /><span style="color:red;font-weight:bold;">Update 4 Aug 2015</span> In response to Hal's comment, here's an improved design that even has redundancy for those who aren't sensitive to color differences. <br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/freezerdial.png" width='381' height='146' /></div>Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,editinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2442http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2442Mon, 03 Aug 2015 21:54:24 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2442http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2442http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24424Not every option has to be documentedhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2437Now and again I'll get a request from an engineer that says, essentially, "We need to update the documentation, because there's this additional way to do the task." For example, I got a request not long ago that we were missing documentation for some alternative ways to specify parameters for a command. The command goes like this:<br /><br /><code>DoSomething.exe --filename &lt;somefilename&gt;</code><br /><br />The engineer wanted us to add that you could also do this:<br /><br /><code>DoSomething.exe -f &lt;somefilename&gt;</code><br /><br />In other words, the <code>-f</code> option was a shortcut/alternative for the <code>--filename</code> option.<br /><br />Similarly, I was recently asked to add a note that told users that under <em>some specific circumstances</em>, they could exclude the filename extension (.pdf or .txt or whatever) from a filename parameter. But leaving off the extension was optional.<br /><br />When faced with a request like this, the writer might want to take a step back and ask whether the update is really that helpful from the user's perspective: does the reader benefit from this additional information, or does it just add noise? Is this essential information, or is just a nice-to-know?<br /><br />It's not that these alternative approaches are <em>not</em> useful to users. But does every user have to know every option for every command? Is the benefit worth the extra effort to add them to the docs, and the users' extra effort to sort through the options? What if the alternatives are really just artifacts of the previous version of a command&mdash;do we still need to document them?[<a href='#noteveryoptionhastobedocumented1'>1</a>]<br /><br />People who document procedures that involve UI might be familiar with a similar issue. When you're telling the user how to do something, does each step of your procedure describe the menu command, <em>and</em> the right-click context menu, <em>and</em> the keyboard shortcut? This can quickly become cumbersome. <br /><br /> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2437'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2437http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2437Thu, 07 May 2015 15:34:29 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2437http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2437http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24372Wait, who got the prize?http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2434I am all for writing that conveys factual information and that&rsquo;s written in an informal style. But some rigor is still required, even then, to keep thoughts and facts on track.<br /><br />Here&rsquo;s an example, one complete paragraph, from the book <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last-Best-Future-Earth-ebook/dp/B00BAXFCU4/"><em>Countdown</em></a> by Alan Weisman, which (as here) sometimes reads like a novel.<blockquote>It exasperates him to think of agriculture&rsquo;s driving incentive being not to feed, but to profit. Reynolds rises and stalks to the window. Both these men have made their careers here, working alongside Dr. Borlaug, authoring papers with him. A Nobel Peace laureate, and yet money to continue his work on the veritable staff of life that launched human civilization, and on which it still depends, is so damned scarce.</blockquote>So, two moments of potential confusion. First, who does &ldquo;A Nobel Peace laureate&rdquo; refer to here? Choices seem to include:<ul><li>Reynolds</li><li>Dr. Borlaug</li><li>Someone who does not otherwise appear in this paragraph.</li></ul>Second, what exactly is the relationship between the Nobel Prize and, well, anything in the rest of the sentence that the term appears in?<br /><br />As I say, informal style is ok with me for a book like this. But if a sentence gets to the point where the reader has to stop and think, even informal writing needs some tightening up.Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,editinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2434http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2434Wed, 11 Feb 2015 10:18:59 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2434http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2434http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24340Seeing yourself in print (sort of)http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2426I&rsquo;ve had two occasions recently of seeing myself represented in, like, actual books. This is a little startling, in a pleasing kind of way.<br /><br />The first reference is explicit. In his book <em>Engineering Security</em> (or at least in the April 2013 draft of it&mdash;download it <a target="_blank" href="http://www.docstoc.com/docs/168418383/Peter-Gutmann--Engineering-Securitypdf">here</a>), Peter Gutmann is discussing the problem of putting security decisions in front of users. Here&rsquo;s a paragraph out of that chapter:<blockquote>The abstract problem that the no-useless-buttons policy addresses has been termed &ldquo;feature-centric development&rdquo;. This overloads the user with decisions to a point where they adopt the defensive posture of forgoing making them. As Microsoft technical editor Mike Pope points out, &ldquo;security questions cannot be asked on a &lsquo;retail&rsquo; basis. The way users make security decisions is to set their policies appropriately and then let the security system enforce their wishes &lsquo;wholesale&rsquo;&rdquo;</blockquote><a href="http://helenahalme.blogspot.com/2011/02/valentines-surprise.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/surprise2.png" width='133' height='170' style='float:right;margin:10px;'/></a>Boy, was I tickled when I ran across that. But I didn&rsquo;t remember being that smart, so I went to the blog to figure out where I had said such an interesting thing. Alas, although it is true that this information <a target="_blank" href="http://mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=480">appears on my blog</a>, it&rsquo;s actually a citation from the eminently quotable Eric Lippert, who knows a great deal more about security than I ever will.<br /><br />And then today I was reading Steven Pinker&rsquo;s new book <em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Sense-Style-Thinking-Person%C2%92s/dp/0670025852">A Sense of Style</a></em> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2426'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>personal,writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2426http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2426Thu, 20 Nov 2014 23:50:47 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2426http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2426http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24261The "last line" effect for writing and editing?http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2412Andrey Karpov, who analyzes software for defects, has <a href="http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0260/" target="_blank">identified</a> what he calls the "last line effect." This happens when people use copy and paste to quickly create a bunch of similar lines of code. He's figured out that mistakes are most often made in the <em>last</em> pasted block of code. He backs up his thesis with hard numbers and with examples taken from real code. He muses:<blockquote>I heard somewhere that mountain-climbers often fall off at the last few dozens of meters of ascent. Not because they are tired; they are simply too joyful about almost reaching the top&mdash;they anticipate the sweet taste of victory, get less attentive, and make some fatal mistake. I guess something similar happens to programmers.</blockquote>I've certainly made this mistake while writing code. This also made me wonder how often this syndrome is evident in writing or editing. What would this look like? Obviously, there are many pitfalls associated with copying and pasting, but is there an analogue in writing and editing to the last line effect?Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,editinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2412http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2412Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:58:43 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2412http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2412http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24121If readers don't understand, it's YOUR faulthttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2410As a technical writer, you will frequently find it useful to be on the consuming end of information and to take some lessons away from that experience. I had such an experience today. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/confusion.png" width='140' height='136' style='float:right;margin:10px;'/>I was working with some internal tools and couldn't get things working. I pinged the experts, and one of them sent me back instructions that ran something like this (altered to be suitable for public consumption):<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px;color:#000099;">1. Save the attached configuration file.<br />2. Overwrite the current config file in the X folder.<br />3. Try the process again.</div><br />I saved the file and overwrote the config file. No luck, so I contacted the expert again. I got this response:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px;color:#000099;">Please follow the instructions <em>exactly</em>.</div><br />So, I tried again. Still no luck, so I sent a dense response detailing what I'd tried and where it had failed. The expert, I must say, became a little impatient.<br /><br />Long story short, the process I was trying has <em>two</em> configuration files in <em>two</em> places. I had overwritten the wrong one. The part of step 2 that said "in the X folder" had somehow not penetrated to me, probably because I was looking right at an actual configuration file and I had no reason to imagine that there were two of them. So the "in this folder" qualification hadn't really registered.<br /><br /> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2410'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2410http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2410Mon, 28 Apr 2014 18:41:18 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2410http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2410http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24101Show/hide revisions in Word 2013http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2407I just installed Word 2013 and was disappointed to note that some of the long-standing keyboard shortcuts no longer work. For example, I've been using <code>Alt+V,A</code> for years (decades?) to invoke an ancient menu command to toggle between hiding and showing revision marks. Even when they introduced the ribbon and the menus went away, a lot of those old menu-command shortcuts still worked. And some still do; but this particular one no longer does, darn it.<br /><br />I spent a little while trying to map keystrokes to the show-revision and hide-revision commands in the <strong>Review</strong> tab. Either I'm not finding them or (as I believe) there's no longer a single command to toggle show/hide of rev marks in the way I've come to rely on.<br /><br />So, macro time. Using the macro recorder and some editing, I created the following macro and then mapped <code>Alt+V,A</code> to it. Macros are stored in <code>Normal.dotm</code>, so as long as that remains available I should be good. (Right?) However, I'll have to update <code>Normal.dotm</code> on each machine on which I install Word 2013. <br /><br /><span style="color:red;font-weight:bold;">Update 2016-03-06</span>: For the "hide revisions" section, I changed <code>wdRevisionsViewOriginal</code> to <code>wdRevisionsViewFinal</code>. This macro always shows the "final" version, but toggles whether rev marks are displayed.<br /><br />Perhaps there's an easier mapping for this functionality. If this macro thing doesn't work out, I'll investigate further.<br /><pre>Sub ShowOrHideShowRevisions()<br /> If ActiveWindow.View.RevisionsFilter.Markup = wdRevisionsMarkupNone Then<br /> ' Hide revisions<br /> With ActiveWindow.View.RevisionsFilter<br /> .Markup = wdRevisionsMarkupAll<br /> .View = wdRevisionsViewFinal<br /> End With<br /> Else<br /> ' Show revisions<br /> With ActiveWindow.View.RevisionsFilter<br /> .Markup = wdRevisionsMarkupNone<br /> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2407'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,MS Word,technologyhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2407http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2407Thu, 09 Jan 2014 23:13:26 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2407http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2407http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24070Your thots? Tech writing in 60 minuteshttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2405A challenge: you have a conference room and 60 minutes to teach a group of engineers to become better tech writers. What do you tell them? Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2405http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2405Tue, 04 Jun 2013 06:17:17 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2405http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2405http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24058Terms of venery, IT stylehttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2400Everyone knows about <em>a herd of cows</em> and <em>a clutter of cats</em> and <em>a murder of crows</em>, right? These are called <em>collective nouns</em> or <em>terms of venery</em>. (The latter, more interesting, term <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/venery?s=t" target="_blank">refers to hunting</a>, should you be wondering.) Many such terms are listed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collective_nouns" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.ch.embnet.org/Embnetut/Personal/venereal.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and on <a href="http://melaniespiller.com/lavender_029.htm" target="_blank">Melanie Spiller's site</a>.<br /><br />For fun the other day, we came up with terms of venery for the many species that can be found in the world of IT. Herewith our list. Can you come up with more?<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px">A compilation of programmers<br />A unit of testers<br />A click of QA engineers <br />A spec of program managers<br />A package of builders<br />A deployment of SysOps -or- A distribution of SysOps<br />A bundle of network engineers<br />A row of DBAs<br />An interface of UX designers<br />A lab of usability testers<br />A snarl of IT admins<br />A triage of Helpdesk engineers<br />A pixel of graphic artists -or- A sketch of graphic artists<br />A meeting of managers<br />A retreat of general managers <br />A scribble of writers -or- A sheaf of writers<br />A revue of editors (haha) -or- A scrabble of editors<br />A project of interns<br />An oversight of auditors<br />A tweet of tech evangelists<br />A quarrel of patent lawyers</div><br /><span class='footnote'>Contributors: me, David Huntsperger, Peter Delaney, Scott Kralik</span>Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,technologyhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2400http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2400Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:36:47 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2400http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2400http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=24000Hurray, new & improved technology! What do you tell users?http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2398Imagine that you're a music company in about 1984. For many decades you've been selling vinyl records, and then along comes this newfangled "compact disc" business. It's obvious to your company that this is the future, and your audiophile customers are all excited. But your everyday customers are confused: are you going to stop making records? Are they supposed to replace their enormous record collections with CDs? And what about the whole ecosystem that's grown up around records: record stores, stereo manufacturers, even furniture makers ... what do you tell them?<br /><br /><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/RecordPlayer.png" width='157' height='143' style='float:right;margin:10px;'/>I've lived through similar scenarios in the software industry multiple times: the company devises a new technology&mdash;not just an update to your already successful releases, but a new approach. As with the record company, tho, it's rarely easy to simply pull the plug on your old stuff, since many of your customers are heavily invested in your old technology. <br /><br />If you're the documentation person under these circumstances, you have a tricky job. If the new technology is sufficiently different, you can create a brand-new documentation set from scratch for the new technology. (The documentation sets for record players and CD players have very little shared information.) <br /><br />But it's not always that clean a break. Consider a database product where the new technology is an innovative search syntax. Everything else about the database (storage, backup, etc.) is the same; you just have a new way for users to craft their queries. Moreover, the old query syntax still works.<br /><br />Too often, what ends up happening is that writers add a section to the existing documentation that describes the new technology. This "solves" the problem. Hey, now we have two technologies! We've documented both of them!<br /><br />But what do your users actually need? <ul><li> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2398'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>technology,writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2398http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2398Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:02:44 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2398http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2398http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23980Rocket Science for Beginnershttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2397The title of this entry does not, as far as I know, reflect an actual book title. But based on something I saw today, maybe it could. Here's an article I saw today on the ArsTechnica site:<br /><br /><a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/01/keep-it-secret-keep-it-safe-a-beginners-guide-to-web-safety/" target="_blank">Keep it secret, keep it safe: A beginner's guide to Web safety</a><br /><br />I was initially interested, because although I am more-or-less conversant with the basics of safe browsing&mdash;using wifi safely at a coffee shop, for example&mdash;there are certainly other people in our household who might value some tips "for beginners" about how to use the web safely.<br /><br />Then I actually read the article. Here are a couple of examples of advice for those beginners:<blockquote>Clicking the browser's padlock icon while visiting Facebook, for example, gives us the most relevant information about the certificate and its encryption algorithms: the certificate has been signed by VeriSign and the connection uses TLS 1.1 with 128-bit RC4 encryption.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />If you want to roll your own [VPN] server, you can use free software like OpenVPN (or, for Mac users, the VPN server included in the $20 OS X Server package). </blockquote>Frankly, I'm not really sure how grateful my wife would be to learn these things. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/ConfusedBeginner.png" width='126' height='121' style='float:right;margin:10px;'/>Obviously, the issue has to do with the term "beginner." It's not actually clear to me who exactly the author had in mind as a beginner, but it's not my wife, or my kids, or a bunch of other people who are perhaps not quite ready to examine the certificate chain for the current session.<br /><br /> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2397'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writing,technologyhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2397http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2397Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:31:33 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2397http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2397http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23972The 10-ton truck on the 2-ton bridgehttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2391We got a customer comment the other day observing that we had a contradiction in our documentation. In <a href="http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/IAM/latest/APIReference/API_PutGroupPolicy.html" target="_blank">one topic</a>, we note that the maximum size of a particular document type is 128K. In <a href="http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/LimitationsOnEntities.html" target="_blank">another topic</a>, we note that the maximum is between 2K and 10K (dependent on some technical details).<br /><br /><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/10TonTruck.png" width='270' height='174' style='float:left;margin:10px;'/>We investigated. The results were a little surprising: seemingly paradoxically, both topics were technically correct. The 128K limit pertains to a transport limit &mdash; it's the largest document that will be accepted for upload. The 2K-10K limit is a business rule that is invoked later when the document is being saved.<br /><br />It's like a 10-ton truck trundling down a road. Maybe the weight limit on the road is 50 tons. However, if the road crosses a bridge with a weight limit of two tons, that's the effective limit for the whole road.<br /><br />We contemplated various ways to fix this problem. A complicating factor was that the text about the 128K limit was generated into the documentation automatically. (By a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javadoc" target="_blank">JavaDocs</a>-like process, if you're curious.) The particular conundrum was how to explain, yet dismiss, the 128K limit in a way that made sense to the customer, since for the most part there is no practical circumstance under which the clearly documented 128K limit actually made sense.[<a href='#thetontruckonthetonbridge1'>1</a>]<br /><br /> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2391'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2391http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2391Sat, 01 Dec 2012 11:57:12 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2391http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2391http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23912Alpha to Z: User-oriented name orderhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2390At work the other day I was working a list of our products and I found I kept hunting around in the list for a specific one. Here's how the list was arranged (I left a few out for brevity):<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px">Amazon CloudFront<br />Amazon CloudWatch<br />Amazon DynamoDB<br />Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)<br />Amazon Elastic MapReduce<br />Amazon Glacier<br />Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)<br />Amazon Route 53<br />Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)<br />Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)<br />Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC)<br />Amazon Web Services Account Billing Information<br />Auto Scaling<br />AWS CloudFormation<br />AWS Elastic Beanstalk<br />AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)<br />AWS Storage Gateway<br />AWS Support<br />Elastic Load Balancing</div><br /><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/Alphabetical_Sorting.png" width='227' height='151' style='float:right;margin:10px;'/>It's a bit more obvious here than it was in the document I was updating, but you can see that the products are arranged in strict alphabetic order. (You might wonder, as I did, why sometimes it's "Amazon" this and other times it's "AWS" that, but what you see here are the <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/products/" target="_blank">official product names</a>, and there's no messing with that.)<br /><br />Still, and in spite of this perfectly logical order, "Elastic Load Balancing" at the end felt like it had been tacked on as an afterthought. Likewise "Auto Scaling" felt out of place, and seeing Amazon CloudWatch separated from AWS CloudFormation was odd.<br /><br />Putting things in alphabetical order has a number of recognized challenges. You need to decide whether you're going to sort case sensitively; how to accommodate spaces and punctuation; how to handle acronyms and initialisms; and so on. (You can explore some of these under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetize#Special_cases" target="_blank">Special Cases</a> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2390'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2390http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2390Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:47:48 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2390http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2390http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23904Try and understand thishttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2388The legitimacy of <em>try and</em> in the sense of <em>try to</em> has been debated for a long time, but it's an established usage in informal English:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:50px"><em>I'm going to try and be there at five o'clock.</em><br /><em>Please try and understand my point of view.</em></div><br />(For a good summary, including OED cites, N-gram stats, corpus search results, and a blessing from Fowler, see the blog <a href="http://thewritingresource.net/2011/10/06/try-and-understand/" target="_blank">The Writing Resource</a>.) <br /><br />Objections to <em>try and</em> sometimes seem a little forced; for example, Grammar Girl <a href="http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx" target="_blank">posits</a> an argument from logic: "If you use <em>and</em>, you are separating trying and calling. You're describing two things: trying <em>and</em> calling." She goes on to say that <em>try-and</em> versus <em>try-to</em> may be more of a pet peeve with her. <br /><br />And yet. I ran across an interesting example today of <em>try and</em> where I had to read the sentence a number of times before I got it:<blockquote>If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.</blockquote>This is from Orson Scott Card's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enders-Game-Ender-Book-1/dp/0812550706/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350664945&sr=8-1&keywords=enders+game" target="_blank">Ender's Game</a>.<br /><br />The intent, as I eventually deduced, was "If you try and [you] lose ...". For my first several attempts to read the sentence, I kept parsing it as "If you try to lose ...", which didn't completely make sense. But first readings are stubborn. In other words, the intent is per Grammar Girl's logical parsing (two actions), but I was not reading it that way. <br /><br />I think some punctuation here might have helped &mdash; a comma after <em>try</em>. Or an extra <em>you</em> inserted after <em>try and</em>. <br /><br />Speaking of <em> [<a href='http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2388'>more</a>]Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>language,editing,writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2388http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2388Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:42:53 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2388http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2388http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23882Headline funhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2385<div style="margin-left:50px"></div>Friend Dennis spotted <a href="http://www.king5.com/news/local/SPD-names-officers-who-shot-armed-man-with-dementia-171200361.html" target="_blank">the following headline</a> on the website of one of our local TV stations:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/ShotWithDementia.png" width='622' height='231' /></div><br /><br />I can't really improve on Dennis's comment: "I guess it's better than shooting him with bullets."<br /><br />It's a great example of the ambiguity that can arise in the term <em>with</em>, which can function either to mark a relative-type clause or to mean "by means of":<br /><ul><li>Officers who shot man [who has] dementia</li><li>Officers who shot man [by using] dementia (haha)</li></ul>Back in my editing days (ha), we policed the use of <em>with</em> carefully. This would be an example of why we did that. <br /><br />PS "SPD" is Seattle Police Department, in case that's not clear.<br /><br />PPS The headline is cooked right into the article's URL, too.Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>editing,writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2385http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2385Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:43:18 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2385http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2385http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23850Key remappings in Wordhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2384This is a blog post just to record the <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/customize-keyboard-shortcuts-HA010211734.aspx" target="_blank">key remappings</a> I do in Microsoft Word 2010. (It is probably not of interest to most people.)<br /><br />I've found that it speeds up revisions <em>tremendously</em> to map keyboard shortcuts to the commands in Word that you use to find, accept, and reject revisions and comments. As a bonus, I don't like that the traditional <strong>Find</strong> key in Word 2010 is mapped to some sort of <strong>Navigation</strong> pane (where traditional Find is available under Advanced Find). So I map Ctrl+F as well. As I say, this is primarily for my own reference.<table><tr><th>Task</th><th>Command</th><th>Key mapping</th></tr><br /><tr><td>Display Find/Replace dialog box</td><td><code>EditFind</code></td><td>Ctrl+F</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Find next revision or comment</td><td><code>NextChangeOrComment</code></td><td>Ctrl+Shift+F</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Accept current change</td><td><code>AcceptChangesSelected</code></td><td>Ctrl+Shift+A</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Reject current change</td><td><code>RejectChangesSelected</code></td><td>Ctrl+Shift+R</td></tr></table>Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>technology,writing,MS Wordhttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2384http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2384Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:55:45 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2384http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2384http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23840Spellcheck typohttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2383Someone at work spotted this great example of a typo that was almost certainly introduced by spell checking (aka a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupertino_effect" target="_blank">Cupertino</a>):<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/KindlePaperweight.png" width='537' height='489' /></div><br />The original is on the techradar.com site, tho they might fix it eventually. However, for the time being, it's even embedded in the URL:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/amazon-announces-kindle-paperweight-1095267" target="_blank">http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/amazon-announces-kindle-<span style='background-color:yellow'>paperweight</span>-1095267</a>Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>editing,writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2383http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2383Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:06:54 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2383http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2383http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23830Two editorial curiositieshttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2382I'm on hiatus at the moment (more on that next week), but I did want to break radio silence briefly to note a couple of editorial things that I've run across recently.<br /><br />The first is a variation on the <a href="http://www.bing.com/search?setmkt=en-US&q=rein+and+reign" target="_blank">common confusion between <em>rein</em> and <em>reign</em></a>. For example, people often write <em>reign in</em> when they mean <em>rein in</em>.[<a href='#twoeditorialcuriosities1'>1</a>] However, I've never personally seen that confusion extend to a context where it's this clear that we mean the straps you use on horses. This is from a Netflix capsule summary:<br /><br /><div style="margin-left:25px;"><img src="http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/ReinVsReign.png" width='315' height='278' /></div><br />Maybe I just haven't been paying attention.<br /><br />And a second one is just a somewhat curious use of the expression "+/-". This is familiar to me to suggest numerical tolerances. So I don't quite get the motivation for using it in this sentence from a <a href="http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=cqa4hlcab&v=0010LjSV1Qsdb_n9NtLQkg0c_-VkotC4B_8h-uJSfbHBqWIpkAhgOOW1AMBpLxyNhcvxEdoQGH6m5w13FQGwRUSmRkchH6e6bY-K-0LcO03T7c%3D" target="_blank">running website</a>:<blockquote>Avoid running during the hottest part of the day. Listen to your body and stop exercising, find a shaded, cool area, and rehydrate (<span style='background-color:yellow'>+/-</span> seek medical attention) if you experience lightheadedness.</blockquote>If I were writing this out, I'd write something like "and if necessary&nbsp;...", but I've never seen <em>+/-</em> used to mean that. Do they mean <em>and/or</em>? If so, is <em>+/-</em> shorthand for that?<br /><br /><br /><span class='footnote'><a name='twoeditorialcuriosities1'>[1]</a> Tho I think that this particular confusion is understandable, since to my mind <em>reign in</em> could be something that constitutions do to chief executives.</span>Mike Pope<mike@mikepope.com>editing,writinghttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/AddComment.aspx?blogID=2382http://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2382Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:53:24 GMThttp://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2382http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogTrackback.aspx?id=2382http://www.mikepope.com/blog/BlogCommentsFeed.rss?id=23821